Relevance Ranking
The relevance score is based on TF-IDF: higher scores for rare words and words appearing in fewer rows. Use ORDER BY score DESC for ranked results.
MySQL
Intermediate
4 min read
Relevance Ranking
Example
SELECT
title,
MATCH(title, body) AGAINST('indexing strategies') AS score
FROM articles
WHERE MATCH(title, body) AGAINST('indexing strategies')
ORDER BY score DESC
LIMIT 5;
-- Score 0 means not matched; higher = more relevant Pro Tip
Words in 50%+ of rows score 0 in natural language mode — too common to be useful.